Tuesday, September 13, 2011

New Semester

A new semester starts this week at Kilns College (in Bend, Oregon), and the course I'll be teaching starts this evening. That course is Critical Thinking, and it's apparently full.

In Critical Thinking, I hope to be able to accomplish several things.

For one, we'll consider the biblical foundation for nurturing the life of the mind, and examine the historical union of Christian theology and the promotion of literacy, Christianity's founding of schools and universities and of modern science, and it's traditional role at the forefront of political and social discourse. We'll touch upon the less positive situation of the last 100 years, where evangelicalism largely abandoned its tradition of recognizing the importance of cultivating the mind.

We'll take a little time to talk about how to get the most out of reading.

And then the remainder of the course will serve as an introductory logic class, in which we'll discuss what constitutes a sound argument and how to recognize an unsound one. As we examine formal and informal logical fallacies, we'll use as our examples actual fallacious arguments that impinge upon issues that ought to be meaningful to anyone seeking to know the truth about the world in which we live.

While it's too late to get into this class, there are ten other courses being offered at Kilns this semester, and most of them still have room. But don't wait--it's already the last minute to sign up and start attending. Go here to check those classes out.